"The only books of mine that I consider pure unadulterated horror are Salem's Lot, The Shining, and now Christine,because they offer no rational explanation at all of the supernatural events that occur." -Stephen King, 97
"Horror fiction is really as Republican as a banker in a three-piece suit. The story is always the same in terms of its development. There's an incursion into taboo lands, there's a place where you shouldn't go, but you do, the same way that your mother would tell you that the freak tent is a place you shouldn't go, but you do. And the same thing happens inside: you look at the guy with the three eye...And when you come out, well, you say, 'Hey, I'm not so bad.' ... It has that effect of reconfirming values, of reconfirming self-image, and our good feelings about ourselves." - Stephen King, 97.
Strieber
"Horror fiction is the essential fiction of rebellion in modern times." - Whitley Strieber, 98.
Barker
"The literature of the fantastic ... can reproduce, at its best, the texture of experience more closely than any naturalistic work because it can embrace the complexities of the world we live in." - Clive Barker, 100
Punter
"Part of the terror to be drived from Conan Doyle or M.R. James arises not from ways in which the stories overturn our predictions but precisely from the way in theich they confirm to them, the way in which, from the very first sentence...we know in advance the intention and approximate structure of what we are reading." - David Punter, 119
"The supernatural forces which [Algernon Blackwood] posits are fundamentally indifferent to man...but if disturbed, for one reason or another, they are able to act in powerful and terrifying ways." - Punter, 119
"If [M.R. James's] characters are not very interest, complex, or even concrete, this is precisely because he does not want them to form a veil between us and the horror." - Punter
"Almost all of the stories are structurally identical in that they proceed steadily...towards a single moment of revelation or encounter." -Punter, on Blackwood, M.R. James, and Doyle.
Tzvetan Todorov
"The fantastic requires the fulfillment of three conditions. First, the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural and supernatural explanation of the events described." - Todorov, 124
"Second, this hesitation must also be experienced by a character." - Todorov, 124.
"Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as poetic interpretations." - Todorov, 124
"The fantastic, we have seen, lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from reality as it exists in common opinion." -125
Rosemary Jackson
"An implicit association of the fantastic with the barbaric and non-human has exiled it to the edges of literary culture." -126
"A unified, stable 'ego' lies at the heart of...systematic coherence, and the fantastic explodes this by seeking to make that heart's darkness visible." -126
"Like its mythical and magical predecessors, then, the fantastic desires transformation and difference." - 126
Manuel Aguirre
"By the side of the Haunted House, however, and soon overshadowing this older symbol, a figure which had been peripheral in the Gothic stage now comes to the fore: the haunted individual." - Aguirre, 199
"The 'official' philosophy of the Enlightenment would have held that everything...belongs in the sphere of the rationally acceptable; the claim that there is an Other, non-rational domain is untenable." -205
"But as the eighteenth century wears out, the dark Other inititates a second strategy: the haunted domain expands. Not just one particular locus, but the world itself of some specific individual is tainted...The numinous creature is no longer a ghost, or a villainous pursuer: rather, numinous elements are descried both in Nature and in the average individual...Evil [acquires] an inner, subjective human component." -205-206. Aguirre relates this especially to Henry James.
"The only books of mine that I consider pure unadulterated horror are Salem's Lot, The Shining, and now Christine, because they offer no rational explanation at all of the supernatural events that occur." -Stephen King, 97
"Horror fiction is really as Republican as a banker in a three-piece suit. The story is always the same in terms of its development. There's an incursion into taboo lands, there's a place where you shouldn't go, but you do, the same way that your mother would tell you that the freak tent is a place you shouldn't go, but you do. And the same thing happens inside: you look at the guy with the three eye...And when you come out, well, you say, 'Hey, I'm not so bad.' ... It has that effect of reconfirming values, of reconfirming self-image, and our good feelings about ourselves." - Stephen King, 97.
Strieber
"Horror fiction is the essential fiction of rebellion in modern times." - Whitley Strieber, 98.
Barker
"The literature of the fantastic ... can reproduce, at its best, the texture of experience more closely than any naturalistic work because it can embrace the complexities of the world we live in." - Clive Barker, 100
Punter
"Part of the terror to be drived from Conan Doyle or M.R. James arises not from ways in which the stories overturn our predictions but precisely from the way in theich they confirm to them, the way in which, from the very first sentence...we know in advance the intention and approximate structure of what we are reading." - David Punter, 119
"The supernatural forces which [Algernon Blackwood] posits are fundamentally indifferent to man...but if disturbed, for one reason or another, they are able to act in powerful and terrifying ways." - Punter, 119
"If [M.R. James's] characters are not very interest, complex, or even concrete, this is precisely because he does not want them to form a veil between us and the horror." - Punter
"Almost all of the stories are structurally identical in that they proceed steadily...towards a single moment of revelation or encounter." -Punter, on Blackwood, M.R. James, and Doyle.
Tzvetan Todorov
"The fantastic requires the fulfillment of three conditions. First, the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural and supernatural explanation of the events described." - Todorov, 124
"Second, this hesitation must also be experienced by a character." - Todorov, 124.
"Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as poetic interpretations." - Todorov, 124
"The fantastic, we have seen, lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from reality as it exists in common opinion." -125
Rosemary Jackson
"An implicit association of the fantastic with the barbaric and non-human has exiled it to the edges of literary culture." -126
"A unified, stable 'ego' lies at the heart of...systematic coherence, and the fantastic explodes this by seeking to make that heart's darkness visible." -126
"Like its mythical and magical predecessors, then, the fantastic desires transformation and difference." - 126
Manuel Aguirre
"By the side of the Haunted House, however, and soon overshadowing this older symbol, a figure which had been peripheral in the Gothic stage now comes to the fore: the haunted individual." - Aguirre, 199
"The 'official' philosophy of the Enlightenment would have held that everything...belongs in the sphere of the rationally acceptable; the claim that there is an Other, non-rational domain is untenable." -205
"But as the eighteenth century wears out, the dark Other inititates a second strategy: the haunted domain expands. Not just one particular locus, but the world itself of some specific individual is tainted...The numinous creature is no longer a ghost, or a villainous pursuer: rather, numinous elements are descried both in Nature and in the average individual...Evil [acquires] an inner, subjective human component." -205-206. Aguirre relates this especially to Henry James.